Woman killed in hit-and-run had been struck on same road

Edith A. McFarland, shown advocating for Sunday DART bus service in 2005, was killed in a hit-and-run accident Tuesday.

By msnbc.com

A wheelchair-bound woman who was killed when she was hit by three cars Tuesday had lost her leg in a previous hit-and-run accident on the same city road in Wilmington, Del., a friend told NBC Philadelphia.

Edith McFarland, 58,was trying to get across South Market Street, a busy road near the Fairview Inn, where she had been living for the past three months, when she was struck at 6:35 p.m. on Tuesday, Delaware State Police said.

"After the impact, McFarland was ejected from her wheelchair into the southbound lanes of South Market Street, where she was then struck by two additional vehicles," investigators said in a statement.

Police said the disabled woman was hit first by a gold truck or SUV. All three drivers fled the scene without stopping and have yet to be apprehended.

McFarland was pronounced dead at the scene in the state's first fatal accident of the year, police said.

The first hit-and-run happened 25 years ago, her friend, Robin Smith, told NBC Philadelphia. South Market Street is also known as Route 13, and McFarland's first accident happened just a few miles further down the road on Route 13, reported CBSPhilly.com.

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Edith A. McFarland was killed in a hit-and-run accident Tuesday night at the entrance to the Fairview Inn on South Market Street, also designated U.S. 13, south of Wilmington.

"To be taken off of this earth the same way she lost her leg, it’s just, it heavies my heart," Smith said.

Smith implored the drivers who hit her friend to turn themselves in.

"I think it's cruel. How can you hit somebody in a wheelchair and keep going?" she said. "I pray to God that whoever hit her, that their heart would be so heavy that they would turn themselves in and that justice would be made for her and her family."

Sources told NBC Philadelphia that McFarland was returning from the grocery store when she was killed.